


I Never Asked For This

by PerfectPurgatory



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Everything Hurts, F/M, Kylo kills everyone, There's no reason for Poe and Finn to be in this except for them to hurt, This Could Have Been Avoided, there is nothing but pain, use of bridal carry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 09:53:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12838695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerfectPurgatory/pseuds/PerfectPurgatory
Summary: Rey and Kylo Ren were two young people in love. Their secret meetings had been what sustained them, but now, they meet on the battlefield. Rey makes a split-second decision to save her lover, and Kylo pays the price for it. Kylo goes home to his family in order to give them her body. What he doesn't expect is what happens when he gets there.





	I Never Asked For This

**Author's Note:**

> This is a re-hash of my other fic I Never Asked For This. I was unhappy with it and decided to make a new version. This one is twice as long and packs twice the hurt. If you're a sucker for sacrificial death, you've come to the right place.

She was keeping a close eye on him. He was across the battlefield, defending himself, while she was doing the same. The problem was, they’re on different sides. On the battlefield, at least.

              It had been a year since they started their rendezvous. She had sought him out without anyone else’s knowledge. She reached out to him because she wanted to know more about the Force, and he reached back. They would take trips, short ones, most of the time, to different planets. It was perfect because hardly anyone recognized Rey, and they didn’t recognize unmasked Kylo. No one knew what he looked like besides the General, Snoke, and Hux. It was a perfect plan.

              He would show her the galaxy, all while helping to train her. They both got something out of it. It was about three months in when things got a little strange. They would find themselves sitting closer together, waking up from sleep to have their hands touching the other’s, in awkwardly close positions, brushing up against each other accidentally. It was a month later when Kylo kissed her. It was out of the blue. She had been arguing with him while he was showing her a lightsaber technique. He reached out and touched her hand, and she stopped arguing. She sheathed her saber and they shared a kiss. Things were never the same after that.

              Their meetings became more frequent, and they would sneak transmissions to the other person late at night. It became an agonizing wait for both between meetings. Rey was positive Luke knew, and Kylo was positive that Snoke knew. But neither of them stopped the couple. They wondered why, but didn’t think about it much. Their focus was on each other.

              They took it slowly, and awkwardly, at first. But they quickly relaxed into it. There was more laughter than before, and more adventures. He was happy to show her the galaxy, knowing that each new experience was one he could share with her. They ate exotic fruits, drank exotic wines, and visited extraordinary places. Finally, he took her to Naboo. It took him some time to do it because Naboo was a Republic planet. They wouldn’t take kindly to finding out the knight of the First Order was visiting. But he was determined to go anyway. He wanted to show her the rolling fields, the waterfalls, where his grandfather and grandmother first fell in love. It was there they first whispered those four words to each other.

              Rey had never been happier. The only thing keeping her from being happier was knowing that they would have to meet on the battlefield. Once they could get away, they would hide out until the fight was over. Kylo didn’t mind so much that Rey was killing the Stormtroopers, but Rey minded that Kylo was killing the Resistance fighters. So, he vowed to only kill in self-defense. They would sneak away as soon as they could. Everyone just figured they were going up against each other again. Each time, they would be asked how the fight went. Each time they would reply, “we are evenly matched.”

              Because they were equally matched in every way. Kylo just seemed to be a step above Rey in whatever they were doing or feeling. Rey slashed with anger, Kylo slashed with malice. Her sadness was his agony. Her fear was his despair. Her love was his infatuation and his undoing. They kept things going for a while, knowing at some point, they would have to either run away together, or break it off. Neither one of those were good options, so they both ignored it.

              Now, they were on the battlefield again, and they were both watching each other from across the field. Kylo deflected lasers instead of charging forward to take them down, and Rey mercilessly mowed down the Stormtroopers singlehandedly. She had drastically improved since Kylo started teaching her.

Rey had her headpiece in, so she could hear all the radio chatter on the Resistance’s side. It was mostly regular battle commands. “Red squadron, follow me!” “Blue squadron, stay on that fighter!” “Black squadron, attack from the left side!”

They had never really been worried about each other in battle. Kylo was still anxious, but he trusted her. He trusted his training methods and he trusted that she knew what she was doing. However, that didn’t stop him from occasionally killing his own men to save her the trouble. He would do it discreetly, deflect a blaster bolt and make sure it hit them. He did it more often than he cared to admit. Right now, she was doing terrifically, and Kylo had been doing wonderfully at not leaving hundreds of bodies in his wake.

Rey was hacking away, deflecting blaster bolts, and taking down as many Stormtroopers as she could. She wasn’t paying attention to the comms until she heard his name. Her ears perked up and she ran. She didn’t care if anyone saw her defending him, she had to get there as fast as she could. Running past Stormtrooper after Stormtrooper, she killed them as she could, but her focus was on Kylo. She made it there just in time.

He was too busy at his front to look at his back. He was being overrun, and he didn’t want to kill any more than necessary. Rey ran up and jumped behind him just as three squadrons closed in on him. They open fired. Rey was deflecting as fast as she could. She knew she couldn’t hold out too much longer, but she also knew that she had to try. Kylo wouldn’t have been able to watch both his back and his front, so someone had to pick up the slack. She heard the General on the comms.

“Rey! Rey, get out of there!” She was frantic, but Rey didn’t care. “That’s an order!” Rey ignored her.

 She was grunting. The bolts were coming in faster. One grazed her arm and she yelled. That got Kylo’s attention. He turned around and screamed at her.

“Rey, get out of here!” She ignored him too. She was determined to make sure he was safe. She didn’t know what she’d do without him.

It was too much. One hit her leg and she went down. She vaguely heard Kylo screaming her name before it all went black. They had hit her in the chest.

The Resistance fighters immediately stopped firing. That was a mistake. Kylo, feeling that she was gone, screamed in rage. He pushed back the fighters in front of him and turned around to kill the others. This time, it was him that was too much, not them. They died one by one as Kylo cut and slashed.

He didn’t stop there. He kept going until both armies were decimated. He was in a blind rage. When there was no one left for him to take out, he stood there, chest heaving.

His arms ached. His chest ached. His head ached. But most of all, his heart ached. He closed his eyes and wished this was a dream, that he would wake up next to her on Naboo and that everything would be alright. He opened his eyes and found he was still on the battlefield, bodies strewn all around him. He ran back over to Rey’s body, riddled in blaster bolts. He swept the hair out of her face and put it behind her ear. She looked beautiful, even in death.

He scooped her up in his arms, carrying her limp body back to his ship. She was lighter than he would expect, but the burden he carried on his shoulders was massive. He was the only one left, so he laid her down on the bed and got in the pilot’s seat.

              He got into the orbit of the planet and then stared out into the abyss. The stars were dimmer than he remembered them being. He closed his eyes again, hoping that she would be alive when he opened them. When he didn’t hear any voices or footsteps, he opened his eyes. Taking a deep breath, he got up and walked back to the sleeping area, where he put her. He sat beside her body, still warm to the touch.

              He grabbed her hand, placing it between both of his hands and brought it to his lips. He kissed it once, then allowed himself to look at her body. She really was riddled with bolts. It had burned her skin and her clothes, and all he could smell was burnt flesh and fabric.

              He used to dream of her, when they were apart. He would dream of her on that island of hers. He would dream and see her shining eyes, her precious smile, her sun-kissed skin. Her freckles glowed in the starlight and her hair was just as radiant as her smile. Looking down at her now, her freckles were no longer glowing, her hair was dulled, her skin was starting to turn a sickly pale, and her smile was nonexistent.

He wanted to be angry. He wanted to go to the Resistance and kill every single one of them. He wanted to hate them all, and, in a way, he did. But she had given her life to save his own. Could she have really loved him so much?

He wanted to be mad at more than the Resistance. If it hadn’t been for Snoke, for the First Order, she would have never been put in harm’s way. It was as if he could see clearly now. All those times Rey had warned him, told him that the Supreme Leader wasn’t good, it all made sense. He couldn’t go back to the First Order. He would kill anyone in sight, and they would eventually capture him to put him up for execution. He hated them.

              His face became hot and his throat closed. His chest burned, and his vision became blurry. Wails wracked his frame as he held onto her hand as tight as he could. Kylo Ren cried for the first time since he was a boy. He cried for all the love lost.

              “I never asked for this,” he said to her body between sobs. “I never asked for you to love me.”

              After what seemed like an eternity, his heaving stopped, and his vision returned. His chest untightened, and his head stopped reeling. The only thing that didn’t stop hurting was his heart.

              He knew what he had to do. He couldn’t be selfish and bury her himself. She had friends, people she would call family. They would miss her. He placed her hand gently down on her chest and walked back up to the cockpit. It was lucky that he had learned the location of the Resistance base before the battle had begun. He had no intentions of using the information until now.

              It took him less than a few hours to get there. He put all his ship’s stealth on, so he wouldn’t trip any alarms. He landed about a couple of miles away from the base. It was nighttime, thankfully. That would make what he had to do easier. As soon as he landed, he turned off all systems. He knew it was a matter of time until a patrol found his ship and alerted the whole base, so he had to move quickly. He put his helmet on and picked her up for the last time. He closed his eyes and could almost smell the aroma of her hair when it rained. The reverie was quickly quenched when harsh reality stepped in and all he could smell was burnt skin and singed hair.

              He started walking toward the direction of the base. She was heavier now than earlier. The entire way, he kept thinking about their time together. He never wanted any of this to happen, but it happened anyway. He hadn’t meant to touch her hand that day. He hadn’t meant to kiss her. He hadn’t meant to fall in love with her. He hadn’t meant for her to die for him, either.

              _It should have been me,_ was all he could think after that. He knew that he was about to be overrun with fighters, and he knew he couldn’t hold his own against them without killing them all. He hadn’t known that Rey was running to save him. He would give anything to go back to that moment and stop her, to grab her and run. They could have gone someplace. They could have gone to Naboo. It would have been safe there. They could have started new lives, had a real life together. Instead, she was dead in his arms, and he was bringing her body to her friends who hated him.

              When he was within sight of the base, he stretched out his powers to affect the guards standing watch. They would be knocked out for a good while. He went inside the base, trying to find where Skywalker was. He walked down a corridor and felt someone coming, so he dove into an alcove off the hallway. They walked past and didn’t see him. When it was cleared, he walked again in the direction of his uncle and his mother. They were getting closer and closer.

              He had to knock out a few more men and women along the way, but he finally made it to the room that he knew held Skywalker and the General.

              He opened the door with the Force and stepped inside, closing it behind him.

              Leia looked horrified as she glanced between her son and the girl whom he loved. She stood where she was, unmoving. Luke looked somber, but not surprised.

              Kylo held onto Rey tighter and tighter still when Leia moved towards him. He took a step back. Leia pointed to the bed beside him, and he knew what she was trying to say. Reluctantly, he gently placed her on the bed, moving the back of his hand across her cheek before standing back up to face his family. He took the helmet off. His faced revealed nothing but anguish and confusion.

              Softly, Leia asked him, “Ben, what happened?”

              He stood there, looking at the ground for a minute and then looked up at her, almost in tears again.

              “She sacrificed herself to save me.” He said it as stoically as he could but seemed to fail.

              Leia staggered back and sat in a chair, hand over her heart, eyes staring off into the distance.

              “It should have been me.” She looked back up at him, bewilderment on her face. And sadness. “It should,” he said as he balled his hands into fists. “Have been me.”

              He looked over at Luke who was staring at Rey’s limp body.

              Something clicked in Kylo’s head. He was always good at reading people, but this was different. This was a feeling and an intuition, something he couldn’t shake. He narrowed his eyes in disbelief and pointed his finger at his uncle.

              “You,” He bared his teeth. “You _knew._ ”

              All Luke did was look between his sister and his nephew, with a knowing look: a guilty look.

              “You knew!” Kylo screamed.

              “Ben, calm down,” his mother said.

              “No. He knew she would die and he let her go into battle anyway! She’s dead because of him!” His finger still pointing at Luke, rage surged inside him.

              “I knew it was supposed to be one of you. I didn’t know who.” Luke said it in a matter-of-fact manner. He wasn’t going to apologize.

              “It was supposed to be me out there, not her! You could have kept her here, kept her safe, but you didn’t!” He was pacing a little, chest palpitating. Leia looked at Luke like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

              “Luke. You knew?” This time, Luke looked at Leia pleadingly, as if to ask for forgiveness.

              Just then, a siren went off. They had found his ship. He knew they would be swarming him any minute. Just as he was about to pounce at his uncle, the door behind him opened and Poe Dameron stepped in. He was going to tell the General to stay where she was until they found him, but he had found him right here.

              “You!” As Kylo turned around, Poe punched him in the face. It was as Kylo was holding his face that Poe glanced over and saw Rey’s body. Understanding little of the situation, Poe pulled out his blaster and pointed it at his head.

              “Poe, don’t!” It was Leia.

              “Why not? You know what kind of damage he’s done. You know he can’t be saved!” He was glancing at the General while keeping almost constant eye contact with Kylo Ren.

              “Poe,” she said pleadingly.

              “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t shoot you right here.” He had his finger on the trigger and the blaster was primed and ready for use.

              Calmly, without any other emotion besides hurt, Kylo looked him in the eye and said, “Because I love her.”

              That angered Poe even more. He yelled, aiming his gun down and shooting both of Kylo’s legs. Kylo went down immediately. “You _loved_ her? You’re the reason why she’s dead!”

              “Poe, put the blaster down. Now.” It was a direct order from the General.

              “With all due respect, ma’am, I can’t do that.” His eyes were still trained on Kylo.

              Leia got up and Luke pulled her back. Kylo sat there, on his knees, staring up at Poe. He took one last look at Rey. She was peaceful. She was serene. But she was dead. And his uncle was to blame.

              “Go ahead. I know you want to.” Kylo realized he had a death wish. He couldn’t go back to the First Order, and the Resistance would likely kill him anyway. The love of his life was no longer with him. He did, indeed, wish he was dead.

              Poe looked at him, steam coming out of his nose as he breathed in violent breaths. With one swift kick to the face, all went dark. Glancing over at Rey, she was the last thing he saw.

              He woke up a few hours later in a cement cell. There was a plate with rations on it in the corner, along with a cup of water. The Resistance sure knew how to treat their prisoners.

              He didn’t know what to expect. Could he expect a trial? Would they kill him immediately? Would they torture him to get information out of him? He didn’t know. All he wished was that whatever it was, it would be swift. They had taken his lightsaber and his helmet, but left him in his clothes. All he knew was that it was supposed to be him on the slab, not her. She was all he could think about.

              He was left in that cell for a few days. When they finally came to get him, it was his mother.

              “I tried to bargain with them.” She sounded sad.

              “I just want this to be over with,” was all he said in return.

              She had brought him out side of the base. Before he stepped outside, he knew what was about to happen. They had decided on an immediate death sentence. No trial, no begging for information, nothing but a firing squad consisting of five men and two familiar faces: Poe and FN-2187.

              His mother let go of him as they approached, two other men taking over. As they brought him to the wall, they tried to turn him around. He pushed them off with his shoulders and stood, facing his death.

              He closed his eyes, imagining her on her island: her hair floating in the breeze, her smile brighter than the sun, and her freckles that glowed brighter than the stars.

              He would die just as she died. They were each other’s undoing, and all he could think before it all went black was _It should have been me._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed it, please leave a comment or a kudos. I'd love to hear from you guys.


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